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But rather than starting at this unfathomable, universal scale, my co-founder Craig Swanson and I wanted to base creativeLIVE on something very tangible: an online learning platform that focused on teaching real skills. We wanted to offer courses from the world’s best creative do-ers where anyone in the world with access to an internet connection could learn tangible, tactical skills in photo & video, art & design, music & audio, maker & craft, and business & money from Pulitzer Prize Winners, New York Times best selling authors, Emmy nominated directors, and more. And we wanted this learning to be free.

One stroke of genius is the simple business model which came straight outta my partner Craig’s brain. That is, anyone can watch and participate in the courses while they are being broadcast LIVE on the internet in HD, and you only have to pay for any course if you want to be able to watch the recording again whenever you want...to save it, rewind it, time shift it, etc. That model promotes and encourages access like no other education in the world. The LIVE recording makes interaction possible within the recording when 50,000 people come together to take a class - and the knowledge base that’s captured during that broadcast is a collective knowledge base... The magic lies in the combined effort of the expert and our community bravely coming together to learn and create.

A second stroke of luck was our discovery that the world WANTS to be a more creative place - that there’s a real need for this kind of education. in 2009 I created the Best Camera iphone app which was the first app that enabled users to share images direct to social networks. It was a prime mover in the mobile photo sharing ecosystem and went to #1 in the iTunes app store, was an App of the Year for Wired Magazine, featured in the New York Times, CNN, on television all over the place, etc etc. More important than it’s business success however (as it was 9 months later copied and soundly trounced by a little Silicon Valley company called Instagram) was that it confirmed for me that the world yearned for creativity - that somewhere inside us we all want to create & share. AND that we are all life-long learners. I gave my 63 year old mom an iPhone loaded with Best Camera and in a matter of weeks she was transformed from someone who was told her entire life that she wasn’t creative into the “most creative” of all her friends simply by taking photos everyday and sharing them on social networks.

We knew that my existing community was excited to learn about photography, design & creativity. And we extrapolated that the same thing could be true for all generations from millennials to my mom. So we leveraged a decade of experience from Craig’s technical background, some of my creative mojo, made some calls to friends who are the world’s top creative instructors - and we launched creativeLIVE in March of 2010. It became instantly profitable - the classic “10-year-overnight-success.”

Overall the education industry is the world’s largest industry that has yet to see real disruption and meaningful innovation. It’s ripe for change and what we’re seeing (and doing at creativeLIVE and elsewhere on the web) is just the beginning. The future of education isn’t about 4 year degrees from brick buildings covered in ivy. It’s more about what you know and what you can do, than where you picked up that knowledge. And it’s less about pieces of paper that verify your knowledge and more about demonstrated application of that knowledge.

Schawbel: What technologies are you paying attention to now that will disrupt your industry?

Jarvis: 1. LIVE internet video. For obvious reasons, this is a huge deal for the success of creativeLIVE. It’s also going to continue to replace - or at least erode - traditional news and reporting, along with the role of the “TV” relative to “the internet.” The continued fusion of those two information delivery vehicles, plus the era of real-time data are going to have huge impacts on us.

2. Wearable technology. Wearables - be they cameras, fit bits, or smart watches - are still early but they will be here to stay. Yes, Google Glass is a rediculous thing to wear on your face, but the contextual data that those sensors display, create and cultivate is important (and impressive) stuff. Since I’m a photo geek, I’m highly attuned to- and working with wearable cameras. I can promise that in the not-too-distant future we will see GoPro’s or smaller equivalents embedded in football helmets for POV entertainment, into human beings for analyzing what’s going on in our bodies, and attached to the lives of the people we learn from which will further contextualize the teacher / apprentice relationships and experiences. These wearables will bring about an entirely new era of context.

Schawbel: What are your top three pieces of career advice?

Jarvis: 1. Scratch your own itch. What problems/challenges/stories are you currently living through? Whatever your answer - it’s those stories you should be telling with your art, it’s those solutions that you should be providing with your business, service, startup, etc. If you’re going to change the world - or at least make a dent in it - then you’d better be carrying some really energy and passion into the challenge, because you’re gonna need it. If you’re trying to solve other people’s problems you’ll probably run out of gas before somebody else (someone who actually cares about the itch) beats you to it.

2. Nights & weekends. Stuck in a cubicle? Not living your dream? Whatever you’re doing on the side of your “real” job, whatever you’re doing with your free time - that’s what you’re soul is angling for in your next gig, job, career, life. So how do you make that dream career come true if you’re already in a full time gig? It’s all about nights and weekends. If you want it badly enough you’ll find the time. Instead of watching TV at night, or Facebooking, try throwing all those extra hours at your passion. That’s the only way to make sure you’re dreams happen. If you care enough about your career to create your dream job, you’ll probably need to line up that move / transition between the hours of 7pm and 2am. Skip that re-run of Family Guy and get to work.

3. Make friends. Things don’t make things happen, people do. If you think you’re ever going to “earn” that promotion, that job, that gig without someONE first noticing you, you’re nuts. Think you work for yourself? Wrong. Even if you’re self employed, other people have to hire you, buy your stuff, like you enough to listen, help, or care about what you’re doing for you to find success. The world of achieving career success is a world where community is front and center. Your network - however you define it - is a huge, requisite key that will help unlock your future.

Dan Schawbel is a workplace speaker and the New York Times best-selling author of Promote Yourself. Subscribe to his free monthly newsletter for more career tips.